Swamp Sophistication at Big Cypress Distillery

The Biscayne Corridor is defined by two bodies of water. To the east is the ocean. Anyone who’s been to the beach knows what that’s like. To the west, though, is the swamp. The Everglades and the Big Cypress are never exactly what they seem to be. They look like a flooded prairie, but they’re a shallow, slow-moving, and very, very wide river that flows past the sawgrass and hardwood hammocks toward Florida Bay. The water in the Big Cypress is the same opaque brown as tea, caused by the same chemical process – the long, warm steeping of botanicals that gradually saturate that slow river with tannins.  

Newcomers to the area tend to treat the swamp as an alien wilderness out beyond the frontier of Krome Avenue. Hardy locals know that there’s wisdom to be gained out in the wetlands – once you’ve steeled yourself against the mosquitos and alligators that guard the urban boundaries. For the ever-inquisitive Biscayne tippler, however, it can be just as edifying to learn those long-steeping lessons by merely driving halfway there. 

In Kendall, the Big Cypress distillery and tasting room offers spiritual guidance of a delicious and distinctly South Floridian nature. With autumn settling in, there is no time like the present to warm your belly with their fermented concoctions. 

South Florida Spirits

Mark Graham, his brother-in-law Ben Angel, and his cousins Fernando and Danny Plata are all Miami locals. Graham founded

the business in 2016 with Fernando as his head distiller. 

“Fernando had been brewing beer, among other hobbies, and I was living in D.C. at the time – I’m a tax lawyer by trade,” Graham says. “He called me with the idea, and I thought it would be something great for the city and that there was a market for it, so that was the beginning!”

Angel, a seasoned mixologist, is behind the bar at the Kendall tasting room most nights. And Danny? “Danny takes care of everything else,” Angel explains. 

The company’s first entry into the market was Magic City Gin, made with 12 botanicals including vanilla, which gives this gin a more mellow, rounded flavor than most. “Our gin is an Americanized style, and not the typical London dry gin that dominated the market for the past several decades,” Graham explains. 

It’s good enough for sipping, but outstanding in his favorite cocktail, a Prohibition-era recipe with only three ingredients called a bee’s knees. “Deeelicious and packs a punch,” he says. 

The company’s second entry into the market – although the first to come out of a Big Cypress still – was Hell’s Bay Rum, named for one of Fernando’s favorite fishing spots. The rum is made in a Spanish style, aged in oak barrels previously used for aging bourbon. 

You can find the blue-label Magic City Gin, Hell’s Bay Rum, and the more botanical-forward Magic City XXI Gin (named for the year it came out, 2021) in Total Wine, Jensen’s, and at a few Biscayne Corridor bars and hotel lounges such as Corner Bar, Epic Hotel, Mama Tried, Sherwoods Bistro, The Citadel, and a host of hot spots in Miami Beach. 

But at the tasting room, you can find things that aren’t available in any stores … yet. “When Florida law changed last year to allow us to serve cocktails, we expanded next door and converted our old tasting room/lab to a proper cocktail bar,” Graham says. “We serve all the classics plus barrel-aged cocktails, and some weekends we have cocktails on tap out of a keg.”

Go West, Pilgrim

The Big Cypress Cocktail Bar is in a row of unassuming warehouses next to Miami Executive Airport in Kendall at 13995 SW 144 Ave., Bay 207. But inside the door is a cozy oasis of cool where the fellow behind the bar is more than happy to share a splash of wisdom along with some of the distillery’s latest small-batch successes. It’s a small space, so calling ahead for a reservation is recommended. 

On a recent weekend, Angel brought a bottle of vibrant red liqueur out from behind the bar. It was a tart, complex amaro made with Florida hibiscus, something like a sorrel-infused, rum-based Campari.

He offered the distillery’s complex take on absinthe, poured a barrel-aged Kendall Negroni made with their own answer to vermouth, and, from the far end of the bar, tapped a gleaming glass pot packed with dried fruit, cinnamon, and other spices steeping in rum for “rumtopf,” or rum pot. It’s a European drink that tastes something like a liquid fruitcake. “We started giving the rum pot away one Christmas just as a special thing, and now people call ahead and ask for it,” Angel says. 

Big Cypress has plans for other locally flavored liqueurs as well, including a guava liqueur and some other, more experimental spirits he wasn’t at liberty to discuss. Fans of the distillery’s seasonal offerings, however, will be pleased to know that a new batch of orange-spiced rum is on its way for October, and the popular sloe gin -- steeped in sloe berries and elderberries – is available at the tasting room as well. 

“Soon we’ll be coming out with a range of liqueurs for folks to buy, with the idea of using local produce for the base,” says Graham. 

Further in the future, Big Cypress has a “high-rye” whiskey maturing in barrels, waiting until the right time to emerge. They’ve also been working on a different style of rum, based on techniques from the French Caribbean rather than the Spanish-style rum that’s better known in Florida. 

“It’s more full-bodied and uses a bacterial culture from sugar cane that’s reintroduced to the barrel, adding esters and more flavor,” Angel says. “We want that funk that countries like Haiti and Martinique get in their process.” 

But all rums, however they’re made, have a greater sense of terroir than any other spirit, he explains. “Rum has a real expression of the place where it’s grown.” 

The Spanish-style Hell’s Bay Rum is a mature spirit made from South Florida sugarcane, and is, as Graham is proud to point out, the first aged rum made here in Miami. 

“My favorite cocktail from the bar right now is our Hell’s Daiquiri, which is a classic daiquiri with our Hell’s Bay Rum,” he says. “A classic daiquiri is made similar to a bee’s knees, actually.” 

HELL’S DAIQUIRI

·    2 oz. Hell’s Bay Rum 

·    1 oz. lime juice

·    1 oz. simple syrup 

Combine ingredients in shaker over ice, get it cold, and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with lime. 

MAGIC CITY BEE’S KNEES

·    2 oz. Magic City Gin

·    1 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice

·     .5 to 1 oz. honey syrup (“Mix honey and some water in the microwave and you’ve got ‘honey syrup.’”)  

Put everything in a shaker, get it cold, and strain it into a coupe glass. Garnish with lemon peel.